Top Confusions in Digital Media

November 5, 2008
By sinha

While covering the Minglebox’s new strategy, I checked their traffic ranking in Alexa and Comscore and here is the contrast:

As per Comscore, Minglebox’s traffic (UU/PV/Avg. Visitor) seems to beat Facebook’s India traffic – but Alexa throws a completely different view!

Who do you trust? Alexa or Comscore?

Comscore doesn’t track the traffic from cybercafes and has a panel size of 16,000 in India (tracks household and office usages, 15+ age group) – so is it a good way to track relative performance of sites?

Maybe.

What about Alexa? Have you come across a single soul who has installed Alexa’s browser toolbar? We haven’t. Can you rely on Alexa for relative performance? Not so sure.

Same with Google trends – works in some cases, grossly misses the point otherwise.

To summarize, following are our top confusions from the digital world:

  • Number of Internet users – No matter how you define the ‘user’, most of the reports grossly differ when it comes to defining the total number of Internet users.
  • Site traffic (discussed above)
  • Size of Internet advertising market in India
  • Mobile Advertising Market - 500 crores or..? Very often, we come across reports that estimates the mobile advertising market anywhere from Rs. 40 crores to 500 crores (same with the online gaming market).

Much of the above confusions surmount because of lack of any trusted authority in the Indian market. Is there an opportunity to be one?

Yes.

What’s your take? What are you confused about?

Tags: ,

               About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in. He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
  • If Comscore has a 16000 panel, that is already huge compared to TV...a panel of 16000 individuals to track user habits of 40 mn ppl vs a panel of appx 35000 (8000 households) to track viewership of 450+ mn ppl...
  • antispin
    Do we know _exactly_ how each of those sites chart out the numbers? All I have read are vague (and short) descriptions of what's going on behind the scenes. I wish there were a completely transparent, open-source, solution for tracking web footprints. Come to think of it, isn't there something in the works at Mozilla Labs?

    Meanwhile, everyone is free to choose numbers that make their site look good.
  • Different sources and different methods always give different numbers, there is nothing new or interesting about it, apple trees gives apple and orange tree gives oranges only, you don't compare Apple to Orange and say why are they different... but you prefer one over another or prefer them equally.

    The confusion would always remain there as long as there are more than one source for any information, hence it is always the information seeker who decides which source to trust more.

    Even if it is possible to doubt "inflation" or "GDP" number you can't do anything about it and may not even write about it as it is just one source... "Govt. of India", you don't have a choice on "Population figure" as well, because it is only "Indian Census" which provides you that, but here in case of Internet you would as there are multiple sources.

    The game in "sample based measurements" is always of "representation of universe". If any measurement agency makes sure that their panel (people using the toolbar or utility or survey or whatever that tracks usage or asks usage) are demographically or behaviorally representative of universe than the number can not be grossly different from reality and from each other. To study stray dogs we must pick the right ones representing all kind of stray dogs in the area, the one sleeping bellow our car can't be the universe.

    - Now the next question is at "what level of depth is this representation achieved?"
    # If a 2K or 20K panel represents overall Internet user base than overall numbers should be correct but if it doesn't represent a segment within it e.g., "the dating users" on the net properly than the "dating website related data" it will throw would be misleading.

    - Finally, there is always one best method, like if a city has the affordability then someone opens a "super specialty hospital" otherwise people keep on depending on the "next door nursing home", if people can't afford there is no point discussing the need for a super specialty hospital. Therefore the ultimate question is:

    "Is the Indian Internet Measurement Buyers ready to pay for the best methodology?"
  • @sampad, isnt IAMAI supposed take care of this as per this link http://www.iamai.in/introabout.aspx,
  • Agreed! Even I think lack of legitimate & trusted authority make Indian digital market very murky.

    So is PluggdIn jumping into this space soon? Would love to see one from Indian digital domain to be there!

    Best of luck for all your endeavours!

    ---
    Sampad
blog comments powered by Disqus